This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

Following their seventh loss of the year, the Melbourne Stars are still at the bottom of the 2022–23 Big Bash League. Stars had lost their previous two games and were in urgent need of a victory going into this one, but a lackluster performance at the plate led to another defeat.

When Joe Clarke was substituted out early after only four minutes, Stars had a shaky start to the game. Faheem Ashraf, who was recently destroyed for 61 runs, got off to a good start this time with dismissing Thomas Rogers. The innings was then saved by a good 60-run partnership between Hilton Cartwright and Beau Webster, but the run rate was still barely above 6 at that stage.

After Webster, who was having trouble hitting the boundaries, left the field for 27 runs, Ashraf returned to claim the key wicket of Cartwright, who had scored a half-century. Stars struggled to consistently hit the boundaries in the end, and they would not have surpassed 130 if it weren’t for James Seymour’s 7-ball 20. On the other hand, hurricanes got off to a quite different start.

Caleb Jewell engaged the Stars assault after losing Ben McDermott early in the pursuit to give his team a strong start. Despite Zak Crawley’s less-than-stellar performance at the other end and the low needed rate, Hurricanes sailed through most of the innings without incident. After making 70, the affable Jewell left, and that’s when Stars saw an opportunity to make something out of nothing.

With 34 balls remaining in the chase, Hurricanes only needed 17 more runs to cross the finish line at 115/3. However, Stars took advantage of the fear that was caused in the camp by the wickets of Crawley and D’Arcy Short. 

Nathan Coulter-Nile, who then abruptly removed Ashraf for a duck and the Hurricanes after two balls, pierced Mitchell Owen’s defense. Asif Ali hit a six in the next over, which at first glance seemed to quiet the crowd, but with just three runs still needed, the Pakistani batsman also left before Nathan Ellis finally helped the Hurricanes cross the finish line with a streaking boundary.

Brief scores: 

131/7 in 20 overs Melbourne Stars (Hilton Cartwright 57;Riley Meredith 2/25, Nathan Ellis 2/12)  lost to Hobart Hurricanes 133/8 in 17.4 overs (Caleb Jewell 70, Zak Crawley 30; Liam Hatcher 3/25) by 2 wickets